Odd Taxi Movie: In the Woods

The point is: Odd taxi's movie is a recap of the anime, not entirely new content. Of course, there are a lot of new scenes with a new narrative point of view, like a police interview. I personally loved the experience a lot, even though I've watched the anime before. Another person went with me to the movie session, and this person had never seen Odd Taxi; loved the movie. So I think it's quite worth watching, just don't expect a sequel.



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So, basically, I really liked the movie and I don't understand people's disappointment, the producers themselves previously disclosed that it would not be a ... sequel...

If you are new to the Odd Taxi franchise, this is not the entry you should start with. Although it is a recap of the original series, due to it being a movie, much of the dialogue and mystery storytelling which made the original so great had to be skipped in this installment. So, if you are new, go watch the original. It is one of my 10/10s, and I would recommend it to anyone without hesitation.

You've probably seen the user score hovering around a 6/10. This mostly happened due to disappointment with what this movie ended up being. People ... were expecting a sequel (me included), and unfortunately that's not what this is. What the description says is accurate, it's a recap with a reveal of what happened after the cliffhanger final scene of the anime. Yes, I do think it's a scummy move to have cut this out and resold it, and this anime kind of deserves the pounding it's getting in the reviews for having done that.

That aside, however, I genuinely enjoyed watching this movie. It's an interesting recap as far as recap films go; the first 3/4ths or so of the anime is recapped using an interviewer as a plot device. The interviewer is talking about the events prior to the big finale with the characters, explicitly stating some new perspectives that you might have missed on your first viewing of the TV anime. Then, the finale is played more or less intact, with some new scenes added in as a nod to the final episode's reveal and some further acknowledgement of the TV anime's cliffhanger. Then the new scene of the cliffhanger happens.

No spoilers in this review, but if the reveal of what happens is your only drive to watch this movie, I'd say just look it up online instead. It's not worth sitting through the whole film just to see it. It's honestly nothing special at all, which is kind of a shame, honestly. If mean, they really had to cut that scene out and create this whole stink over *that*?

If you're interested in seeing a slightly new spin on this world and it's characters, however, it's absolutely worth watching this. For me, the new stills of the characters they showed in the end credits was worth my time by itself: I loved revisiting this series, and even if this is a water-downed Odd Taxi, it's still Odd Taxi, and Odd Taxi is great! So if you're ever considering a rewatch of the original, but are short on time for whatever reason, don't let the hate against this scare you off, deserved though it may be. It may not have been what you wanted, but it serves its purpose as a recap quite adequately.

Massive disappointment is an understatement. I was expecting 50% recap at most like the Goblin Slayer movie, but this movie turned out to be >90% recap and honestly just felt like a cash grab. The movie is over 2 hours long, but - no joke - 2 full hours is just recap, and the MAL description of "reconstruction" was giving it too much credit: it was basically just all the characters narrating the scenes from the anime series from their perspective without adding that much. Maybe if you dig really deep you could find some discrepancies/omissions in their narrations for some he-said/she-said type analysis, but ... that is a huge stretch.

The only completely new material was the final 10 minutes and even that was not satisfying. Without going into spoilers, the new stuff left me feeling, "That's it? Is that all I waited months for?" They could have easily edited the anime to fit the actual ending instead of leaving it in a cliffhanger so you would have to watch the movie to get the "real ending." Overall, this movie left a really bad taste in my mouth and felt like the production company tarnishing the legacy of a great anime for a quick buck. Just save your time and look up the ending somewhere in 5 minutes.

3/10, and the 3 points are just leftover goodwill from the anime series, which remains a masterpiece except for the ending.